Sipsey Street Irregulars: Missouri voters declare right to keep and bear arms 'unalienable' . . . sort of

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Missouri voters declare right to keep and bear arms 'unalienable' . . . sort of

Amendment 5, although a large positive step for Missouri gun owners, lends a veneer of legitimacy to the practice of allowing voters to decide whether or not government is to be forced to recognize our fundamental human rights as "unalienable," and Bloomberg is spending scores of millions to convince low information voters to give the government a free hand. Might we have given up more than we gained?

3 comments:

Paul X said...: "...by subjecting the fundamental human right of the individual to the approval of the masses, by making legal exercise of that right conditional upon the popularity contest of a vote, this approach voluntarily surrenders the high ground inherent to defending a right that is truly unalienable."

This speaking in terms of rights is the kind of thing that twists people into knots, as seen here. The author in the same article stated it didn't matter what the electorate said about it. So which is it?

I think it is better to stop using "rights" as your landmark and just say, "I won't be disarmed." There is nothing to argue about then.; August 6, 2014 at 9:15 PM
Anonymous said...: In order for the democratic vote - direct or indirect via representation- to have authority over the right to keep and to bear, the votes held would have to be in favor of repealing the Second itself ( as the 18 th was outright repealed I it's entirety). Only THEN could a vote like this one hold merit.
After all, we the people ARE the ultimate source of authority over government and governance and we COULD decide to ( a ) disband the political ties that bind or (b) simply amend our framing document to reflect what we - together- now view as self evident.

This can, then, be argued both ways. 1) the people actually do hold the authority to vote on this and 2) inalienable rights are outside the parameters of the democratic vote. Both are actually true positions. HOWEVER, and this is WHY the bill of rights was put together as a package deal in the first place - taking even one part of it apart destroys it all and this reality would stop any attempted repeal.

The beauty of that article set was that the very process that brought it about could remain in place but - as M C Hammer sang..,. You can't touch this.

Dayum them founders were friggin clever.

May well have afforded the zealots some false premise by going along with this but the response should be a unified push matching the Cruz takedown of Feinstein. Would you apply the same restrictions upon first amendment rights as you call for on second amendment rights? When forced to admit the answer is "no" and the reason is because of a RIGHT, the vote doesn't matter - cuz it won't get that far.; August 7, 2014 at 1:07 AM
Anonymous said...: What's next, voting on if you truly have the right to life and liberty? All the more obvious why Obama wants 3rd world illegals here; for this kind of voting. Why don't we all just vote on if God given rights are really given to us from God...I didn't think I could get any sicker of this crap, but I just did!; August 7, 2014 at 10:08 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Missouri voters declare right to keep and bear arms 'unalienable' . . . sort of

3 comments:

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